The CIS countries will correlate their integration efforts among themselves and with the European Union. In the long run, this will help create conditions for preparing a general agreement on the principles of free trade in the vast area from the Pacific to the Atlantic. After that, this construct could be proposed to the Asia-Pacific region, where trade policy issues are discussed very actively.

Re-economization of the EU’s energy security benefits both Russia and the EU, as politicization of the sphere leads but to an impasse. Still, we must be prepared for an activation of somewhat forgotten or yet incompletely shaped contradictions – the problems of legal approximation and liberalization, differing perceptions of reciprocity, and the dissimilarities in building dialogue between the private and public sectors.

The normalization of Russian relations with neighbors is rather a steady trend, than a string of casual diplomatic successes. The question is what this normalization is all about “technologically,” so to say, and not from the standpoint of content. Is there a reason to say that this successful experience may furnish a solid basis for an overall strategy of building relations with neighbors west of the Russian border?

Russia and the West have lost a great deal of trust in each other, and trust is proving hard to restore, the maintenance of existing arms control regimes such as CFE remains an important political objective, even if the military rationale behind their establishment at the end of the Cold War has largely vanished.

Since around 2017–2018, the world has been living through a period of progressive erosion, or collapse, of international orders inherited from the past. With the election of Donald Trump and the rapid increase of US containment of Russia and China—which is both a consequence of this gradual erosion and also represents deep internal and international contradictions—this process entered its apogee.

The announcement of the US pullout from Syria was received with caution in Moscow. Besides the security and political challenges it may bring about, the Trump decision could mean the end of a practical, relatively constructive US-Russian approach to conflict at flashpoints.

The presidents of Russia, Turkey and Iran convened for their fourth summit on Syria in Russia’s southern resort city of Sochi on Feb. 14. Earlier leaders of the “guarantor countries” of the Astana process met in November 2017 in Sochi, in April 2018 in Ankara and in September 2018 in Tehran.

Anyone who has at least some idea about the theory of international relations should remember the oft-quoted formula put forward by the father of British geopolitics, Halford Mackinder: “Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.”

Relations between the US and Russia are at their worst since the end of the Cold War, China and the US have tense relations, India and China are trying to stabilize relations after a period of acrimony. The major powers appear today to be like the unhappy families in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: ‘Each unhappy family (major power in this case) is unhappy in its own way.’

Freedom of movement and freedom to choose a place of residence can be ranked among the category of freedoms which, as part of the Global Commons, have been restricted to varying degrees at the level of communities, states, and international associations.